Latest / Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman / Meredith Heller – Writing by Heart

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Meredith Heller – Writing by Heart · Vox Novus with Victor Fuhrman

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Vox Novus, the new Voice, Vox Novus, the new Dimension. Vox
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Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from their experience and offer tools to
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help us navigate our rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Furman. Welcome
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to Vox Novus, the new Voice. In a world that often seems chaotic
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and overwhelming, the internal journey of self discovery, healing, and finding connection
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is more critical than ever. May this journey include expressing our experiences through poetry,
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prose, and other forms of writing. My guest this week on Vox
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Novus, poet, educator, and author Meredith Heller used poetry to heal her
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own life and has been guiding others towards self expression ever since. Meredith Heller
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is the author of Write a Poem, Savior Life, and several poetry collections.
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A poet, singer, songwriter, avid nature lover, and educator with
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degrees in writing and education, she leads writing workshops online and in person at
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schools, juvenile detention centers, women's prisons, and wellness retreats. Her website
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is Meredith Heeller dot com and she joins me this week to share her path
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and latest book, Writing by Heart, a poetry path to healing and self
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discovery. Please join me in welcoming to Box Novus Meredith Heller. Welcome,
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Meredith, Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having
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me. Meredith. Please share with us your early path and how writing and
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poetry birthed for you as forms of expression. Sure, I had a very
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unconventional growing up. I left home when I was about twelve thirteen years old,
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being disenchanted with school that didn't really tap me in ways I wanted to
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learn and grow, disenchanted with society that didn't dig deep enough for meaning and
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connection and relationship with the earth, and disenchantment with a very dysfunctional family.
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And so I went to the place I trusted the most, which is nature.
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And I lived out in old abandoned barns and old abandoned houses and domes
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that I built in the woods along the Potomac River about twenty minutes. It's
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outside of Washington, d C. Where I was growing up, and it
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was a very hard time for me. I was very alone. I suffered
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with horrible depression. There was no security, nothing and no one to hold
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on to, and all of my friends were dying of suicide. And overdose,
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and I probably wasn't that far behind them, and poetry and songwriting found
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me. I would get the first line of poetry or the first line of
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song lyric with a melody into my left ear like a lifeline and a work
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permit. That really was an invitation saying, stay here, stick with it.
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Write your way to clarity, to understanding, and to even perhaps making
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beauty out of what feels overwhelming feelings of loss and hurt and loneliness. So
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that's how poetry found me. I went on from there to go back to
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school and get degrees. And what I realized was that I wanted to get
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to the kids who had been like I was, and I wanted to say,
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here's the way we can write ourselves home, we can write ourselves free.
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And so then I was a poet in the schools for thirty years,
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and now I'm teaching adult women. And your bio says, your calling led
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you to degrees in both writing and education as a California poet in schools.
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You offer workshops in public and private schools, in women's prisons, the Institute
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for Poetic Medicine Creativity summits wellness retreats, and online. Please share a little
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about each of these settings and how these workshops promote healing and empowerment. Hmm,
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great question. Thank you so. Working in as a poet in the
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schools for thirty years, first in Boulder, Colorado, and then in Marin
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County, California, also teaching in juvenile hall, so I had this great
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range of working with at risk kids, highly gifted, creative kids, and
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every kind of kid who goes to a regular public school as well. And
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I would say that the beautiful moments are seeing when kids realize their own creativity
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and that they have something original to share, and that they findkind of vehicle
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through poetry where they can express their deepest concerns and what they most care about.
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And to watch them make poetry their own, to watch them find their
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voice and have an avenue of expression, was so fulfilling for me. And
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so that was the beauty of working in the public schools. Working in private
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schools with kids is I think they're so structured and disciplined that to allow them
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some freedom and creative expression was like bringing them to an oasis. Working in
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juvenile hall, where the kids were in lockdown, many of whom had been
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in gangs had horrible losses and trauma in their lives. They would often say,
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Hey, Meredith, why do we need to write poems? We're stuck.
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We're stuck here in lockdown. And I would say, your imagination is
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one of the very few places in your life where you're the only one who
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gets to make up the rules. So let's make the most of them.
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So that was incredibly rewarding. And the poems that came out of each of
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those arenas I find thrilling. Working in the women's prison, I would say,
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is one of my very favorite things I've ever done. I didn't know
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what it would be like, and I was a little nervous when I first
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went in, and I found the incarcerated women to be so so genuine and
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so honest, and so willing to look at their lives and own what they
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had done and be committed to making changes, really because they wanted to get
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back to their families and their loved ones. And it was a very very
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rich experience. And I remember, especially after one series, and all the
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women in the prison all get a copy of my book as part of being
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in the poetry workshop, and so at the end of one series, they
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said, oh, Meredith, we're going to really miss you. We love
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being in workshop with you. And then they hugged my book to their chest
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and said, but we have your book now and we're going to keep writing.
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And that was it for me. I just started crying. So that's
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amazing. I love doing that work with that population. And now I am
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working since COVID. I created these online workshops for women to create community when
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we were so isolated in quarantine, and these workshops have blossomed and grown so
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that I have women all over the country and a few around the world,
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and we meet once a week for a five week series, and this goes
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on through the whole year. Each one has a slightly different focus, and
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we learn and grow together, we laugh and cry together. We see that
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there is a commonality between us as human beings. As women, we have
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similar hopes and dreams and desig fires and fears and longings. So we see
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that we're not alone, and paradoxically, we see that our story is unique
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and that it matters. Our voice being woven in to the whole living community
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of life matters. And I see these women walk out of workshop literally and
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metaphorically, standing taller walking their talk, walking their truth, saying yes when
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they mean yes, no when they mean no, and having really been enriched
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and fortified and more confident in themselves, They've found their voice and it is
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such an honor to work with them. Before we discuss you're a new book,
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Writing by Heart, a poetry path to healing and self discovery, let's
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discuss write a poem, Save your Life. What inspired this book and what
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did you offer your readers? M Thank you. So this book really came
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out of the work that I had been doing working with specializing with teens in
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the schools and in private workshops. I specialized with teen girls for empowerment and
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self expression, and I just felt at one point that the work that they
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had been producing, the poems and the invitations, were so rich that I
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really felt like I wanted to share it with a greater audience. I wanted
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to share it with the world and open this avenue of self discovery and self
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expression to as many people as possible. So I sat down and wrote the
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first draft of the book very quickly in about two weeks, and then spent
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the next two years making it sing and shine. And so it is chock
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full of what I call writing invitations writing experiences, and you can open to
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any page in the book and find a creative theme that brings up an inquiry
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into your own life and your own journey, and then a writing invitation,
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and then example poems to so that you can see what other people other teens
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did. This book, though it is full of teen examples, it could
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be for any age of person, and new or seasoned writers will find so
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many great invitations both to expand creativity and imagination as well as to take a
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deep look at our own lives, lives with self reflection and hopefully digging up
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treasures. What about that save your life part? You had talked about being
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with other teens when you were growing up who were suicidal, and we seem
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to have, unfortunately and terribly an outbreak of that. In our current society
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today, a lot of people are either contemplating suicide or have taken their own
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lives. What is there about saving your life with a reflection of poetry?
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Yeah? Absolutely so. The beginning of this book, in the introduction,
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I tell the story of how poetry writing saved my own life, being that
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teen, growing up on my own, going through a lot of trauma,
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feeling very alone, untethered really from life, from society, from family,
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from any kind of security. So I tell the story about how poetry writing
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saved my life and how I had this epiphany that this was so special and
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so powerful in my life that I realized this is my path to share poetry
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writing as a way to befriend ourselves and turn toward the challenges and the obstacles
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and the depression and the hopelessness, as well as the beauty and the joy,
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but to turn toward what is hard with the companionship and the mirror of
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our writing, this deep personal, self reflective, self expressive writing that we
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do in my workshops and that you can do with the books. And I
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really do believe that it can save your life. I think that we are
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trained to move away from what hurts and what's painful, and if we can
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turn toward it and give it our attention, believing that it is working in
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our favor for our growth, then we befriend not only what feels like the
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obstacle, but we befriend ourselves and this does save our life. It sounds
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a lot like engendering self compassion very much, so yeah, and making room
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for all of it. As I was saying that all of the feelings and
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all of the challenges and what feels like obstacles are welcome here in myself and
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here in our writing. So that means having a conversation with depression, having
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a conversation with hopelessness. And if we dig deep enough with these feelings,
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there's usually a message that those feelings are trying to get through to us.
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Hey, I'm not happy. Can we make some changes here? Hey,
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this thing doesn't feel right for me? Can we do something different? And
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I feel like when we begin to make room for all of it, not
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just the good, but all of it, we have a much richer human
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experience. We're more resilient, and our capacity both for the depth of sorrow
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and the heights of joy grows beautiful. Do you have one favorite poem from
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your students that you share in that book? I would love to share one
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with you. Thank you, Victor, You're welcome. This is called Hummingbird
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by Alisa, who's seventeen. Hummingbird. They called me one when I was
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a little girl, I who was always flittering around, light as a feather,
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determined as a bee. My eyes irridescent, my cheeks flushed, never
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could sit still, always dancing off to the next sip of sweetness. So
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when I went off to art school and all my friends were decorating their skin
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with ink, I wanted one on my left shoulder so I could look back
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and remember. I didn't know it would hurt. The tight wings, the
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red throat, the sound and breeze as they hovered for one infinitesimal moment with
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pointed beak supping up the midday mead. The circles they made in the air,
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chasing each other, drunk on a sunny day above a pear tree.
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I wanted that kind of love. That young woman may have been seventeen years
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old, but I believe she was an old soul. I do too.
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I get chills reading that. That is magnificent. I especially love that last
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line. I wanted that kind of love. That she could sense that humming
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bird and that experience she had when she was a child, when she was
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like a hummingbird, was her sense of being in that place, that experience
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of love, and that was how she wanted to mark and stamp herself with
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the experience of love. Beautiful, Thank you so much for sharing that,
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yes, what inspired your latest book, Writing by Heart, A Poetry Path
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to Healing and self Discovery. Well, as I was saying in October of
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twenty twenty, when we were all in quarantine, I had been teaching,
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specializing in teaching private poetry workshops for teen girls for empowerment and self expression.
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And one of the mothers of one of those teen girls asked if I would
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do a poetry class for her and some of her women friends. And I
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said, gosh, I don't know if I know enough to teach adult women.
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And she said, oh, Meredith, I've been sitting outside my daughter's
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door for years during your workshops doing all the writing, and I definitely think
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you know enough to which I thought so much for confidentiality, but okay,
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So we started our first class. I had eight women, mostly from the
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Bay Area in California, and we had a great time. And when that
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series finished, they asked for another one, and this time they came back
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with their friends from all over the country, and so we went from one
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cohort to two to three, and we keep growing. We currently have five
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cohorts with women from all over the world. And I sat down. I'd
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been living in the California Desert. I sat down one day and looked at
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all the material and thought, I want to share this with the world.
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So very much like the first book, I sat down, I had two
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weeks off from teaching. I sat down and wrote the first draft of the
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book in two weeks, and spent the next year making it sing. And
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so this book, like the first one, is chock full of writing invitations,
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probably a little more inviting to probe more deeply since I'm now working with
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adults. There's some pieces and some chapters that are a little more edgy than
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in the first book. And then the poems are just mind blowing, heart
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opening. I call the poets in this book and the poets who come to
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my workshops, the women warrior poets. They are brave and beautiful and vulnerable
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and brilliant. And they show up each week in workshop and dig deep and
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dig up the treasures in their lives or make what they thought was challenging or
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debilitating into the treasures. And this book is full of their poems, their
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treasures. My guest is Meredith Heller, her book Writing by Heart, a
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Poetry Path to Healing and self Discovery. Meredith, please share with our listeners
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where they can get your books and find out more about you and your amazing
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work. Meredithheller dot com that has all the information about books and workshops,
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and both books are available online everywhere books are sold, or from your favorite
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small bookstore independent bookstore you can order it. These books are everywhere for you
22:52
and we'll be back with more of Meredith after these words on the Own Times
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back on box Novus. My guest this week is Meredith Teller her book Writing
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by Heart, A Poetry Path to healing and self Discovery. You talk about
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writing by heart in the title of your book. What does writing by heart
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mean to you? I have always loved this concept of doing something by heart.
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When we do something by heart, we know it through and through.
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We know it in our bones and in our blood, and we have put
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time in with it to practice it, to make it our own, and
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it becomes a part of us to where we can trust it to be there
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and trust ourselves to know how to access it. And so that is my
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hope for people coming into this writing practice is that we become fluent in the
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cultivation of this connection with ourselves and our writing in a way that feeds us
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and nourishes us and gives us a map to clarity, to healthy choices,
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to being able to see ourselves more clearly, and even a map to the
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unknown, to being willing to not know what we're going to write or what
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how it's going to turn out until we really get in there with our paper
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and pen and become part of the creative process. So I'd say, if
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I really had to boil it down, I would boil it down to trust.
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Writing by heart is building trust with ourselves, our writing, and our
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creativity. And the subtitle of your book is a poetry Path to healing and
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self discovery. What kind of poetry does your book help people write? And
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how does it provide a source of healing. The kind of writing we do
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with this book and when people come to my workshops is very personal, self
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reflective, very honest writing. I really feel like we in our writing,
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we can show up with radical honesty. We can say things on the page
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to ourselves that we often can't say to anybody else or in certain areas of
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our lives. And if we don't want anybody else to ever read that or
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find it, rip it up, throw it away, burn it. But
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we've said it, so it's now real. And it's like looking in a
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mirror, a kind mirror that sees beneath the surface into our subterranean depths,
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and we are in touch with deep psyche, perhaps our muse, and we
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can discover things that we don't ordinarily have access to in our regular waking,
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living, working lives when we do this kind of writing, So we can
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access us what I call wild wisdom, that we all have deep psyche intuition
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and the kind of metaphors and imagery and felt experience that gives rise to the
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writing that becomes rich and informative for us, so where we actually learn something,
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discover something from the writing that we do that then makes us even more
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of who we are. So someone comes to you and says, I am
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not poetically inclined. May they write in other forms? Absolutely? Yes,
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And I'd have to say, these days, I'm really using poetry as an
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umbrella term to encompass and hold space for this deep person all self reflective,
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self expressive writing that we do in my workshop, so that anyone can do
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with the books and all forms of writing are welcome. I really guide people
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to write in whatever way is most natural for them. So if that story
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or prose, or song, lyrics, or even just mind spill, heart
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spill, stream of consciousness, just write is the main message. Just get
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writing. You can experiment, you can explore, you can make a mess,
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you can write something brilliant anytime. But to get going, to get
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started, just put pen to paper and write in whatever way comes naturally for
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you. What about lyrics, definitely let's start. Let's start a limerick workshop.
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I don't know if I've ever written one. I think it would be
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a good challenge. Bennett Serf was famous for saying he wrote a limerick about
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limericks being shall we say, a dirty a limerick packs laughs, gastronomical and
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to a space that is so economical. But the good ones I've seen so
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seldom are clean, and the clean ones so seldom are comical. Ugh Bennett
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Serf, the Great Bennett Serf. I love the economical of it, really
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good. What can a regular writing practice do for us? Oh be a
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place of refuge, of communion with self, of deep friendship and self compassion,
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A place where we practice with ourselves kindness, curiosity and courage in looking
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at ourselves, in saying yes to our creativity, our imagination, the deep
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cues that come from that deeper psyche within us. It puts us into a
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deeper flow, a deeper conversation with ourselves and with how we're moved by life
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and then valuing this. So, this fast paced world doesn't give a lot
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of time for self reflection, and I think we're at a loss because of
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that. So I think in this cultivating, this practice of writing is a
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time to slow down and really practice presence with ourselves and really value how we're
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moved by life, nature, beauty, sorrow, what's happening in the world,
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To really sit and then to make something of it. You know,
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to be moved so much by something, whether it's something that hurts or something
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that's beautiful, to be moved so much that we have to spill open into
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creative expression. What advice do you have for someone who says they're having a
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hard time starting a regular writing practice. I would say, come to workshop
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and feel the support of other people and have supportive structure where you know you're
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going to write something each week and you don't. It doesn't need to be
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brilliant. You're not writing for anyone else, but you're getting in the practice.
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And if you can't come to workshop, then set up a schedule for
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yourself that works for your natural rhythm. Maybe you write first thing in the
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morning, Maybe you write for fifteen minutes while you have a lunch break.
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Maybe you write like I do a gratitude list every single night before I go
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to bed. Those are great ways to start. Another of my favorites that
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I suggest is keeping what I call a sparkle list. And this is brand
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new from the last workshop we just did called spark the Muse. So a
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sparkle list is writing down, at some point during the day five to ten
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things that you noticed throughout your day that sparked you in some way. You
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found it beautiful, it moved you, it brought your tears, it made
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you stop for a moment and recognize whatever that sparkle was. And then to
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keep a list of these because like a gratitude list, and like gratitude,
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the more we become aware of what does spark us, spark our muse,
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what we're grateful for, we make more room to have that experience, and
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those experiences feed us on a very deep level. What about those who have
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always been writers, longtime writers who have writers block? Yes, So what
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I suggest for anyone with writer's block? And I do this myself because most
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of us do tend to experience it at some time in our lives, and
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you know, we want to run and hide from it because it's awful.
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It feels terrible, and we feel like we'll never write again, and we
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can't even look at ourselves in the mirror have a conversation because we're so upset
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and it feels like the end of the world. So the biggest thing I
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always suggest is changing your environment. So if you live in a busy city,
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go to nature. If you live in a more quiet rural area,
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go somewhere where there's more stimulation so that we have a different kind of input
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coming in that's going to populate different thoughts and ideas and move us from a
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different resource. So that's a big one. The other thing I always suggest
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is to move your body. I am a person who moves and exercises every
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day, and I find that I can sit for two hours and really have
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no new ideas about what I want to write or a workshop that I'm planning,
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and the minute I go outside to go for a walk, Literally ten
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steps into my walk, I've got the whole workshop. I know what I
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need to do with that one part of that one poem. So if you're
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like me, and you're a person who thinks best or finds the still point
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in movement, get out and move your body. And then the final thing
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for writer's block is to trust that even when we're not generating new work,
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there is always something gest stating under the surface in the fertile darkness, and
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everything in nature has a fallow time, So does creativity, so does human
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experience. So to allow for the wholeness of the cycle, and so hard
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to trust the times when we're not producing the way we want to. But
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if we can make friends with this part of the cycle as well, knowing
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that there are seeds that when they're ready, they're going to start climbing up
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toward the light, if we can trust that we will be able to sit
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through the fallow times. And among those seeds. You say that the elements
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of air, fire, earth, and water each possess a unique power and
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wisdom that can fuel our writing and our lives. Please explain. I love
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working with the elements as living beings. I think they are potent and ancient
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forces that have lives of their own, and that we can call on the
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energy of these primal energies to fuel not only our writing, but to revitalize
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our lives. And so we can call on the fluidity of water, we
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can call on the grounding of earth, on the all pervasive lightness of air
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that connects everything. That we can call on the spark and the sizzle and
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the flame and fury of fire. And I love to have people in my
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workshops. I'll take them through a guided journey with each of the elements,
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and then they allow one of the elements to choose them and they become that
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element and write from the voice of that element, writing about the wisdom and
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the skills they know and that they now have as this element. It's so
38:52
much fun. You encourage your readers to give their bodies a voice through writing.
38:58
Tell us more about why this is important. Well, I was a
39:02
body worker for twenty seven years, doing massage and specializing in rehab with spinal
39:10
cord injury patients, and so over twenty seven years, you can imagine I
39:15
worked with hundreds of thousands of bodies and what I learned is that our bodies
39:24
carry the stories of our whole lives, and if we invite and give our
39:31
bodies an opening, they will tell us their stories and what they need to
39:38
heal. So body language is the largest chapter of the book. And we
39:45
start with very user friendly, non vulnerable body parts like the hands and the
39:53
feet, and we move on to more vulnerable parts such as the belly and
40:00
the hips, and we really play with not only giving our love and our
40:10
acceptance and our presence to our body parts, and even to areas that we've
40:17
had challenges or sickness or wounding, and so befriending and giving our love to
40:28
different parts of our bodies that maybe we've spent years pushing away because they hurt
40:35
or isolating ourselves from. So we give our love to our body and then
40:42
other body parts we allow them to give us their wisdom. Like feet teach
40:49
me about stability, heart teach me about loving knees teach me about flexibility.
40:58
Like this tell us about the importance of the inner wilderness. Hmm. So
41:07
this inner wilderness I touched on a little while ago when we talked about making
41:13
room for the unknown. And I think that so many of us are so
41:21
conditioned and enculturated by what is put on us. We're supposed to act a
41:32
certain way, and look a certain way, and go after certain things in
41:38
our lives. And I think there's a time for each of us when we
41:46
realize that some of those ways that we have been conditioned don't really work for
41:52
us. So first we have to come to a place of being willing to
41:59
not know, and then doing this deeper inquiry, work with ourselves to find
42:07
out who am I really? Who am I underneath all the layers of conditioning,
42:15
and what really fulfills me, what really gives me joy and fulfillment in
42:23
this life? And how can I assemble create a life around what my deeper
42:32
values are, How do I really want to relate to myself, to life,
42:38
to other people. So this inner wilderness is being willing to go out
42:45
into uncharted territory within ourselves and kind of do a personal vision quest of inquiry
42:59
that is, really, who am I really beneath the surface, beneath what
43:05
I've always been told who and how to be? Who am I for myself?
43:15
And then hopefully once we touch that from that place, what do I
43:21
have to offer? How do I serve. My guest is Meredith Heller.
43:25
Her book is called Writing by Heart, a poetry Path to healing and Discovery.
43:30
We'll be back with more after these words on the Old Times Radio Network.
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Dot orgo back on box Novus. My guest this week is Meredith Heller her
46:04
book Writing by Heart, a poetry path to healing and self discovery. In
46:10
your chapter entitled Sanctuary, you have under everything contains everything an amazing poem entitled
46:19
Blue Bull. Would you share that with us please? I would love to
46:22
thank you. This is one of my pieces. Blue Bowl. This blue
46:29
bowl like an empty sky turned inside out with small fractures where its earthen soul
46:38
shows through, where it shine has been rubbed away by stars passing through.
46:46
This blue bowl turned on a wheel, turned in someone's hands, born of
46:52
the thick brown clay that lay asleep inside the Earth holding her bows together.
47:00
This blue bowl glazed with crulean blue paint from glass that tumbled on to a
47:08
tiny beach in the Greek Islands by the Mediterranean Sea, where one day,
47:15
when I was seventeen, I saw a man catch an octopus with his bare
47:20
hands, beat it against a rock until it was dead, and then take
47:24
it home and cook it up with garlic and onions, leaks and tomatoes from
47:30
his garden, and feed it to his wife and children. After a long
47:35
day making blue blaze in the hot sun, This blue bowl fired in the
47:43
kiln with fire from the sun, or wherever fire comes from. Where does
47:49
fire live before it's born? Does the spark that makes fire come from the
47:54
stars that circle the sky, that live inside myl This blue bowl, which
48:01
I now hold in my hands and pass into the hands of my lover,
48:07
who sits beside me, munching popcorn and peanuts and small pieces of dark chocolate
48:15
that he feeds me from this blue bowl with his fingers, laughing, his
48:21
mouth smiling, his eyes like river rocks shining. This blue bowl held in
48:29
the hands of everyone who helped make it and bring it to market where I
48:35
saw it and loved it, brought it, bought it, and carried it
48:38
home in the basket on my bike. This blue bowl like an empty sky,
48:45
but not so empty, so so full of all the lives that helped
48:52
shape this vessel, which now holds its own open palms up to the light
49:00
beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. That's breathaking. Thank you.
49:07
May writing be a source of sanctuary in this often crazy world. This
49:14
is what we were just talking about about slowing down the pace of our world
49:22
these days. Is I find insanely ridiculous. I find it it drains me
49:37
so to have the sanctuary, the refuge, the slowing down for self reflection
49:45
through our writing, I think is such a necessary balance to the crazy pace
49:54
of the world these days. Absolutely. What I what I used to do
50:00
before going to work in the morning, after taking my shower and organizing things
50:05
for the day, I'd sit at my desk and see if anything would come
50:08
through me, and occasionally a poem would come through me and I would write
50:13
it before going to work. And I found that that was a wonderful way
50:15
to get my day started. Oh that's so beautiful. I know somebody who
50:22
during their shower just sees if anything wants to come through, and then they
50:27
come out of the shower with a little piece each morning. So that's beautiful.
50:31
Yeah, shower poems. Absolutely, What is the great undoing? And
50:37
what does that have to do with writing? I think this goes again hand
50:44
in hand with what we were recently talking about with both the wilderness and the
50:52
unknown. And so the undoing is this melting process of melting and softening the
51:04
structures and the conditioning that were placed into us before we really had a choice,
51:14
before we really had a conscious choice of who we wanted to be,
51:20
how we wanted to live, what mattered to us. And so the great
51:23
undoing is being willing to let go of what no longer works for us,
51:36
let go of conditioning and culture that was put on us before we really had
51:45
a choice, and to give ourselves time to not have to be producers.
51:53
You know, in this society and this culture, it is all about what
51:59
am I? And that's incredible. I mean, I'm with it too.
52:04
I produced two books and a few poetry collections, and I am on that
52:10
track and I love it and it feeds me my soul. But back to
52:17
balance, to give ourselves time of the not doing the beingness kind of like
52:29
the fertile darkness that we were talking about. In the beingness, in the
52:34
non doingness, there are seeds that are germinating that can only germinate in the
52:45
stillness. And if we don't have that woven into the fabric of our lives,
52:54
we suffer, and even what we produce suffers. So giving ourselves times
53:04
of empty, emptiness, stillness, non doing, undoing, and that leads
53:13
to your final chapter, metamorphosis, embody the poetry of change. How may
53:20
doing this help us both adapt to and embrace change. Yeah, it's one
53:25
of my favorite chapters. It was one of my favorite workshops. Each of
53:31
the chapters in this book comes out of the workshops that I teach online,
53:38
and this was such a rich one. We followed the process that a butterfly
53:49
goes through each of its stages from pupa to caterpillar to this loose kind of
53:59
goo to winged one to full adult butterfly, and we inhabited each of those
54:07
stages, which also had a lot to do with undoing in that goose stage
54:14
and then the becoming process. So this melting down and then becoming the winged
54:24
butterfly, to be present with each of these stages gives us greater capacity to
54:34
embrace change in our lives, to know that each stage of the process is
54:40
necessary. So in terms of the butterfly, we now know that the butterfly
54:49
builds the strength by breaking out of the chrysalis and it has to break out
54:55
of the chrysalis to have the strength and its body to be able to fly.
55:00
So we have to go through each stage of change and metamorphosis in order
55:07
to become whatever we're going to become next. So I think it's about really
55:15
inhabiting each stage along the journey of different parts of our lives, changes we
55:23
want to make, and the whole journey of life itself. The poetry of
55:30
Meredith Heller her book Writing by Heart, a Poetry Path to healing and self
55:36
discovery. Meredith, one more time, please share with our listeners where they
55:39
can get your books and find out more about you and your beautiful work.
55:44
Thank you so much. My website is Meredith Heller dot com. All of
55:51
the information about my books and workshops, some of my writing is on the
55:55
website. The books are available everywhere our books are sold. Meredith, thank
56:01
you so much for joining us today and sharing this beautiful work. Thank you.
56:07
I love talking to you. Thank you, and thank you for joining
56:10
us on Vox Novus. I'm a victor the voice Herman. Have a wonderful week